


(don't wanna say) i told you so

by seraphicbane



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Art Student Clary Fray, Comfort, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Marine Biology Student Maia Roberts, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, among other things, clary is sad over a stupid boy and maia is there to comfort her, just a heckton of fluff what else is new with me, like being the one clary should've been with all along
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 14:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20065627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphicbane/pseuds/seraphicbane
Summary: "Maia? Are you there?"At the sound of Clary's voice, she bolts out of bed and shuffles to the door in her shark slippers, sleep long forgotten."Yeah, I'm here" Maia finally replies as she opens the door and finds a decidedly miserable redhead standing in front of her. "Come in."





	(don't wanna say) i told you so

**Author's Note:**

> so firstly this is completely based on the beautiful song that is told you so by little mix so basically, i had to do absolutely no work here since the premise was already written for me!
> 
> (also kindly pls don't sue me over the slander of john tucker must die....... it was released in 2006 which alone really kind of explains its issues but i've seen it one too many times and it was just too easy to reference in this)
> 
> dedicating this to noi (bxnelight) who writes the softest f/f stories in the whole world (and guessed what tf was gonna go down here as soon as i told her the song i was basing this on!!) and abi who is a renowned claia warrior! mwah

After slaving over a research paper on coral reef biodiversity for what feels like weeks, Maia finally places one last period at the end of the concluding paragraph and submits the paper. Yawning, she glances at the clock above the television and closes her laptop. It may only be 11 pm on a Friday night, but after several days of juggling assignments and double shifts at the Hunter's Moon, she's more than ready to go to sleep.

Just as she is about to fall face-first into bed, there's a knock on her door. 

At first, she doesn't let it bother her and proceeds to wrap the duvet around herself. After all, it could just be a neighbor looking around for baking supplies and with her busy schedule, she hasn't had time to get groceries so walking all the way to the door just to tell them that would be a waste of everyone's time. Most of her friends are bound to still be out drinking anyway.

"Maia? Are you there?"

At the sound of Clary's voice, she bolts out of bed and shuffles to the door in her shark slippers, sleep long forgotten.

"Yeah, I'm here" Maia finally replies as she opens the door and finds a decidedly miserable redhead standing in front of her. "Come in."

Clary heaves a relieved sigh and walks into Maia's outstretched arms without another thought, letting the girl wrap her up in her comforting embrace. They stand there in the hallway for several minutes as Clary stifles her sobs into Maia's shoulder and Maia cradles her head, their height difference just enough for her to be able to press a kiss into her hair.

When Clary eventually pulls back, Maia laces her fingers with hers and leads her into the living room. While Clary seats herself in one corner of the worn-out leather sofa and wraps herself in the fluffy blanket thrown over the armrest, Maia goes on a mission to gather an arsenal of comfort essentials from around the apartment.

"Do you want wine or tea?" She calls out to her as she makes her way into the kitchen, makeup wipes and a full pint of Ben & Jerry's already stuffed in the pocket of her fleece robe. 

Clary lets out a groan and tucks her feet under her, holding the blanket tighter to her chest. "No wine, please. I'm enough of a mess as is."

"Got it," Maia says, having already put the kettle on and dropped bags of chamomille tea into two mugs, knowing Clary isn't fond of wine but still checking for the chance that she might want to forget the events of the night altogether.

A silence falls over the apartment while Maia pours the boiling water into the mugs and carefully makes her way to the sofa with both of them in tow.

"It still makes me smile every time I see this mug in my cupboard," She smiles softly and hands Clary the teal-colored ceramic mug adorned with the logo of Brooklyn Academy of Art. "I'm glad they accepted you because I wouldn't have been able to promise not vandalizing some admissions board member's property had they not."

Clary accepts the tea and gives a teary laugh at the comment, which is all Maia could ask for. "Thanks. For the tea. For saying that," She pauses and sighs heavily. "For letting me be here."

"Hey, of course," Maia turns so that she's sitting towards the girl, placing a hand on her blanket-clad knee. "Whether you want to not talk about it or talk about it all night and then egg his car, I'm down."

The redhead looks up at her, brushing her bangs out of her eyes haphazardly. "I mean there's not that much to talk about. He, um, just texted me saying he got bored and before I could block him on Instagram he had already posted a picture of him shoving his tongue down someone else's throat, so there's that. "

Before hearing those very words come from her best friend's mouth Maia never knew that she could go from perfectly calm to absolutely enraged in 0.5 seconds. "I'm going to kill him."

"No, you're not," Clary protests and reaches out to grab Maia's hand - the one that had calmly been resting on her knee a second ago, to stop her from actually going and committing murder. At the touch, Maia instantaneously softens and sits back down.

"No asshole has a right to make you this upset," she argues, but in a significantly less murderous tone.

"I'm not nearly as upset about the fact that it happened as I am about the way that it happened," She explains and looks down at their hands, drawing soft circles into Maia's palm with her thumb, making it considerably harder for her to actually focus on what Clary is saying. "Deep down I always knew that he cared about himself more than me and it was only a matter of time before he showed his truest colors to me."

Maia takes a deep breath and pulls her hand away from Clary's grasp, drawing the ice cream, two spoons and makeup wipes out from the pocket of her robe. Anything to distract her from the sudden out of control pitter-patter of her heart. "Tadah!" She exclaims, placing the pint of Half Baked into Clary's lap. "And this is not even the best of it! Thanks to Netflix, we also have John Tucker Must Die just one button away if you want to watch it and turn it off 20 minutes before the end where the cheating garbage can of a man gets an unfair Hollywood happy ending?"

Clary's face lights up just about as much as it can while stained with mascara and tears as she grabs one of the spoons and the remote controller to press play on the movie. "You're the best."

A half an hour later her tone is very different as she groans into Maia's shoulder about how many aspects of the film are just plain wrong and although she agrees, she can't hide her amusement at her pained complaints. 

"We have to rewrite the end of this," Maia pauses the movie and pokes Clary in the ribs to get her to look up from her shoulder. "Kate falls for Beth after she kisses her in the Jeep and that's it. John has to deal with the only girl in school he wants to be with dating his ex."

Clary laughs, shaking her head vehemently. "I honestly don't think that even that could fix this abomination."

"Speaking of which," Maia starts and grabs the pack of makeup wipes off the coffee table, scooting over to sit right next to the other girl. "Let's get this eye makeup off your face before it damages your ridiculously perfect skin."

She reaches out to hold the side of Clary's face with one hand and carefully begins to remove the smudged mascara from under her eyes. 

The moment Maia's hand touches her face her lungs forget how to fill out their primary purpose. She tries to open her mouth to say something, anything, but Maia's face is so close to hers that her breath hitches in her throat, any words dying on her tongue.

"Did you just call my face an abomination?" She finally manages to ask several long seconds later, her voice almost a whisper.

"I would never," Maia replies in mock offense and gets up to throw the used makeup wipe away.

"You know I think I should've just listened to you that night I came to you after I met him at the art exhibition," Clary thinks out loud when Maia returns, causing her to raise her eyebrows quizzically.

"What did I tell you?" She questions, crossing her legs absentmindedly.

"That maybe I should just stop dating people who are bound to prove themselves to be assholes," Clary pauses deliberately, working up the courage to repeat the words that had been stuck in the back of her mind for months now. "And just date you instead."

The cup of tea that Maia just positioned in her lap nearly tips over as she whips her head around to look at Clary. 

“Oh,” She breathes out and laughs, trying her absolute hardest to maintain an air of nonchalance. She may have been more than a little bit inebriated that night but remembers saying those words vividly. However, Clary can't know that the night that she came to her, convinced she'd met her soulmate, Maia could only think of ways to get her best friend to realize that she loves her like nobody else does. “I said that?”

"You did," Clary quietly confirms as she mindlessly browses the unreasonably large selection of romantic comedies available on Netflix, suddenly all too scared to look Maia's way at all, her heart threatening to beat right out of her ribcage.

"And you think you should've listened to me?"

She doesn't answer the question. Instead, she deflects it with a question of her own. "Is it too late for me to listen to you now?"

Clary finally turns to look at her then, which makes the words cling to Maia's throat for a moment too long before she manages to force them out. "No," She swallows, almost afraid of breathing too loud and waking up from this moment that's starting to feel too much like a dream. "It's not too late. But I also want you to be sure about it."

Clary reaches out and brushes a strand of hair behind Maia's ear, shaking her head slowly. She is so sure. Her heart has never felt as light as it does looking into Maia's eyes and finding nothing but warmth and unconditional love and care for her in them. "You were the obvious answer all this time that I was just too oblivious to see."

At that, Maia's heartbeat only picks up more speed.

"And as much as I want to kiss you senseless right here, right now, I think you deserve to hear a confession of love from the version of me who hasn't spent an hour crying on your couch over a useless guy," Clary cups Maia's cheek and for a moment the fluttering of her eyelashes combined with the sparkles in her eyes make her want to throw all restraint out of the window, but she stops herself before she ruins something irreplaceable before it even starts. "So, Maia Roberts, will you let me take you out on a date, and then another, followed by many more so I can make up for somehow managing to ignore the best thing being right in front of me all along?"

Grabbing both of Clary's hands to hold in both of hers, Maia smiles with her whole heart in it. "Clary Fray, how do you think I could possibly decline?"

"Great," Clary breathes out and for a moment Maia wonders if she actually thought that she would say no to going out with her, but the thought disappears as soon as she notices Clary's grin.

"You can say it now." Maia gives her an incredulous eyebrow raise, completely clueless as to what she's talking about. "You can say you told me so."

With a bright laugh, Maia wraps her arms around the girl. "No, I don't wanna say it! Why would I?"

"Come on, you've earned your right to say it," Clary says into her neck, physically unable to stop herself from smiling.

"Okay, fine, if you insist," Maia sighs in defeat and leans back, biting her lip in a hopeless attempt to contain her amusement. "I told you that you'd be better off dating me."

With that, Clary pulls Maia back into her arms and presses her forehead against hers. "I already know you're right," She says into the air between them, noticing just how much it sounds like a promise.


End file.
